HP has surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street with a higher than expected quarterly revenue and profit as demand recovered for its notebooks.

But the maker of expensive printer ink predicted that things are going to get worse and the current quarter profit is below analysts' estimates, reflecting weak sales of its printers as companies cut costs across industries.

Third quarter revenue from the company's computer business rose 7.5 percent from the second quarter as sales of notebooks improved. From a year earlier, sales were flat in the business, which accounts for two thirds of HP's total revenue, showing signs of recovery after a drop in the past two quarters.

Notebook volumes increased 12 percent, but the benefit was offset by weak desktop sales and low demand from commercial clients. Revenue from its printer business declined 14.3 percent from a year earlier and 4.6 percent from the second quarter.

HP said it cut about 1,000 jobs in the third quarter, taking the total number of job cuts to about 2,300 this year. The company, which had about 287,000 employees as of 31 October, expects to slash around 3,000 jobs by the end of this fiscal year.

Net earnings from continuing operations rose more than a fifth to $843 million, or 49 cents per share, in the three months ended July 31, as costs fell about nine percent. Total revenue fell 3.8 percent to $11.89 billion, but topped the average estimate of $11.46 billion.

Intel appears to have given up on its wireless world project, which was based around its Core M chip.

I once sat through an interesting presentation once where Intel explained that offices were going to be much more fluid things and people would show up with wireless based hardware, sit down and start work. You would connect on wireless while your notebook would be charged and powered over the the air.

However now it seems that vision is not padding out for Intel and it is getting out of the technology, which would have bought it about.

Last week four Intel representatives resigned their posts at the AirFuel Alliance, an industry group that was formed to push wireless charging standards. In emails announcing their resignations from the AirFuel Alliance committees, the Intel employees cited the company’s plans to realign strategic priorities.

In an email, Intel confirmed that it was likewise shutting down wireless charging development. “Our strategy behind our internal development work to date was primarily focused on accelerating the ecosystem, which has largely happened,” the company stated.

Intel told Forbes that it was continuing to work closely with WiTricity, an Intel Capital portfolio company, and “that many of our OEM partners are using” WiTricity’s solutions. Intel also said it was working with OEMs “to validate technical solutions.”

But WiTricity or anyone else for that matter has offered a date when laptops with wireless charging will be available. They are expected for this year but the user experience, the power level, the efficiency and the cost—will fall short of the vision Intel was promising.With key vision things taken away, Intel appears to be left with more ephemeral talk about the cloud and the Internet of Things very little of the “vision thing” which it used to do rather well.

Microsoft is developing a laptop that runs off a Windows 10-powered phone in Continuum mode.

According to Microsoft’s ‘roadmap’ for Windows 10 , the Continuum-powered laptop is basically an empty tablets with a screen, powered by a phone that slotted into the back of the tablet when needed.

This is what Microsoft said that the laptop will not have any CPU or OS. When paired with a Continuum-compatible phone, it will allow you to use your phone like a laptop.”

It is not clear if Redmond will build it, or if it is just a design standard for Windows Phone 10 manufacturers will be able to use. It would appear that the laptop will still have a drive and all the other gibbons, but will look to the phone to be the processor. We guess it will also be able to swap data between the two devices.

The PC will make a comeback, but the so-called Tablet revolution is history, according to the Chipmaker who missed out on it.

Kirk Skaugen, GM of Intel's client computing group told the Intel Global Capital Summit that there are more than a billion PCs that are more than three years old and a third of a billion that are over five years old. People are coming back to the PC and refreshing their systems.

It used to be that people upgraded every two years or so, but in the last five years silicon has got so powerful that no one saw the need. The problem is that they still don’t and Skaugen hopes that two-in-one detachable-screen systems, will be a major growth driver.

Sales of two-in-one systems are up 150 per cent, he claimed, and are leading to people wanting to refresh their PCs up to 18 months earlier than they would have. Mini computers are another growth market.

Without the growth in two-in-ones, the laptop market in the US would have shown 4 per cent negative growth, Skaugen said. However the new forms created a one per cent growth. He thinks the new hardware that such systems are starting to carry, particularly 3D cameras are going to have people rushing back to laptops.

The big loser in all of this is going to be the tablet market. Intel had got the growth in tablets wrong, he said, and is now revising its forecasts.

"18 months ago many people thought that tablet sales were going to cross over PCs in 2014. Now we're sure they won't ever. Intel has taken a billion units out of our forecasts in the last year," he said.

That is just as well because Intel never made a sustainable dent into the tablet market, but it also fulfilled our predictions that the technology never solved any problems. It was still the same toy that Microsoft had been attempting to sell without success for years and they never had a use.

The world's fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer, Xiaomi is about to enter the notebook market.

The Chinese outfit holds 5.6 percent of the smartphone market in Q2 2015 and was behind Samsung, Apple and Huawei. Xiaomi was larger than Lenovo in the Q2 2015 and this company now wants to start making notebooks.

According to the Taipei Times Richard Lee, chairman of manufacturer Inventec has confirmed that the company will be assembling Xiaomi's first laptop. Xiaomi laptop should start shipping in first two quarters of 2016.

Xiaomi has 200 million registered users and its Xiaomi 4C, which has the high end Snapdragon 808 SoC, is out and selling for1299 yuan / $204 or 182 Euro. The company used the same event to announce Mi mobile, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business model. It is certain that many of its 200 million registered customers might go for a laptop.

The company went into tablet market in 2014 with Mi Pad with a 2048x1546 screen, Tegra K1 processor and $240 price tag. It flogged quite a few of them. We heard that sales was not as great as company expected but it is really hard to find any sales data. This tablet is currently selling at many china based web shops starting at 175 Euro for XIAOMI MiPad 7.9" Retina Screen Android 4.4 NVIDIA Tegra K1 Quad-core 16GB Tablet PC. It is a shame that it never got a 5.0 or 5.1 update.

We will see how the Xiaomi does with notebook. It is not clear if the company plans to use X86 with Intel or AMD or one of the many ARM based products. The notebook could be a Chromebook too, but we will have to wait and see.

Toshiba is showing real awareness of the changing market reality and has launched an affordable two in one. The machine is very well specced, comes with a keyboard and you don't need to sell a kidney to get it with 64 GB of storage.

Chinese companies, such as Chuwi that we recently wrote about, have become incredibly aggressive lately. It's not only that they are ready to sell you hardware for peanuts, the hardware is actually surprisingly good in many cases.

Toshiba is one brand name IT equipment supplier that is dealing with this competition head-on.

They've launched the Satellite Click 10. The 10" tablet with a keyboard runs Windows 10 and is very competitively specced. There's the new Atom X5, 2GB of RAM, 32 or 64 GB of storage, high resolution screen (1920 x 1200), fast WiFi and 8MP/2MP cameras.

Toshiba is selling the tablet only with the matching keyboard, which makes it a perfect little productivity machine right out of the box.

The tablet with 32GB of storage is selling for $349.99 and the version with twice as much storage goes for $369.99. Yes, you read that right. Toshiba is charging only 20 bucks for 32 GB of extra storage. Hear that Apple?!

Toshiba is making sure that Windows 10 does not appear with the normal load of old Tosh. It has announced a couple of new Windows 10 laptops.

Dubbed the Satellite C Series they are shipping come with a 15.3-inch display, and there's also a 17.3-inch model. The devices come with Intel or AMD options although it is not saying which one.

Philip Osako, the senior director of product marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems said it would have up to 1TB of storage and 8GB of RAM.:

"Our new Satellite C Series laptops deliver stronger price-to-performance in the entry-level category, giving everyday consumers what they need to stay productive and entertained without breaking the bank. These laptops include built-in forward-looking hardware features, so when customers are ready to upgrade, they can automatically start taking advantage of the new functionality in Windows 10."

The gear has USB 3.06 and 2.0 ports, Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

The Satellite C Series laptops will be available for purchase on June 21 at major retailers, online stores and on Toshiba's official website – starting at $394.99.

All of the C Series laptops will ship with Windows 8.1, however, they'll get a free upgrade to Windows 10 when it becomes available on July 29.

Word on the street, hotly denied by MSI is that Lenovo is interested in acquiring MSI's gaming notebook business unit to raise its competitiveness. It has made an offer which has not been turned down yet, reports Digitimes

Lenovo, who is a major client of MSI's ODM/OEM business, and both sides are still negotiating over the proposed acquisition.

MSI's success prompted Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba to start developing such products for the market. This has led Alienware to pull finger and get more aggressive to defend its position.

Traditional notebook demand has been weakening but sales of gaming notebooks and related peripherals have been growing and contributing strong profits.

MSI may start facing fierce competition from Dell, Acer and Asustek in the gaming notebook industry in the near future and it might flog the business off while the going is good.

This would give it more time to focus more on its motherboard and server businesses and perfect its recipe for strawberry jam.

The outfit which famously thought about getting out of the PC business is now telling us that it is going to launch several new notebooks running new Intel Ivy Bridge processors. HP, which thought about flogging its low margin PC business, says that the new HP Pavilion range notebooks will go on sale late in April.

The new HP Pavilion range which will have Intel Ivy Bridge processors include the dv4, dv6, and dv7. There will be two smaller systems with quad 2.3GHz Core i7-3610M, while the dv7 has a similarly four-core 2.6GHz Core i7-3720QM.

The dv4 has 4GB of RAM and a 1TB drive and has been locked at 1,600MHz. It also has a GeForce GT 630M video card. The dv6 will have 750GB of hard-drive while the dv7 will sport two single TB drives linked together as well as 8GB of RAM. It should also ship with a GeForce GT 650M for graphics.

There will also be an entry-level Pavilion g4, which will ship with AMD's Trinity platform. Two models will have the dual-core 2.6GHz A6-4400M, which should have an improved Radeon HD 7520G for its integrated graphics.

Razer's US $2,800 17-inch gaming laptop has been in the news for quite some time and although everyone was sure that this expensive laptop would sell, no-one expected such demand, probably not even Razer.

According to post over at Razor's Facebook page, the Blade is experiencing "overwhelming demand" and the first batch was sold in 30 minutes. In case you missed it, the Razer Blade is a 17.3-inch 1920x1080 notebook based on Intel's HM65 chipest, Core i7 2.8GHz CPU, Nvidia's Geforce GT555M GPU, 256GB of SSD storage and Razer unique Switchblade user interface that is actually an LCD touch panel that adapts to various games.

Unfortunately, Razer didn't shed any details regarding the size of the firts wave but has promised that it should be back in stock by mid February.